“I just think I got like a magic draft and laid a lap down.”
Kyle Larson was second fastest overall on opening day for Indianapolis 500 testing on Wednesday but there is still a lot of work to be done.
To his point, Larson laid down a 226.384 mph lap pretty early in his first run of the day but it came in the slight wake of Rinus Veekay ahead of him. Josef Newgarden went 228.811 mph with an even bigger tow, which is IndyCar vernacular for the draft or slipstream.
“I still have a lot of time to learn, so I’m excited about that,” Larson said. “I saw Twitter was going crazy because ‘oh, Kyle Larson was second in his first IndyCar practice with people,’ but there’s a lot of people that weren’t drafting out there or didn’t have the draft that I had.
“I take the credit but it’s really not a big deal, either.”
It’s also worth noting that teams are not even close to trimmed out to the level they will be come next month. But in a way, that’s also valuable for the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion who has been able to methodically learn the intricacies of the Indy car in advance of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
First came rookie orientation at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in October in which he was given three target speeds to incrementally reach before being allowed to formally enter the race next month. There was also a private test at Phoenix Raceway in February.
Larson wishes he could be in the car more but that he also sees value in stacking new experiences each time out.
“I wanted to feel the car at the ROP and just feel like little stuff, what the steering wheel felt like, visually, what all that felt like,” Larson said. “Like okay, that was good, so then go to Phoenix and wanted to feel that car slip and work on the ins and outs of pitting and things like that.
“Now today, I could move on to the next thing, like all right, how does it feel around cars. How does what I’ve learned in the past translate to now being behind cars?”
Larson said he was comfortable in traffic on new tires, which is when he laid down that big lap, but once that set of tires started to give up after a few cycles, there were a few moments that nearly bit him.
“I was by myself just kind of running and building lots of understeer by myself, and we stayed out there to kind of allow Newgarden to catch me, and he ended up passing me, and I totally lost the nose,” Larson said. “That was pretty crazy kind of feeling that and all of that.
“I think I could have done a better job, as well, when he passed me timing the air and the run and all that. Once I kind of lost the nose, it was hard to recover from it. It was so sensitive that, again, I don’t even know if that’s real, but I would assume that’s more real than me not feeling a balance change in traffic.”
More than anything else, Larson says he really wished he had the SMT data that he has for his NASCAR races. SMT is Sports Media Technology and is, amongst other things, throttle and brake traces and driving lines to compare himself to.
IndyCar doesn’t use that type of data.
“It would just be nice to see myself — ghost car on top of mine from somebody that was running around and what that all looked like, where they’re grabbing gears, where I’m grabbing gears, line shape, all that,” Larson said. “Everything about SMT would be amazing to look at and be so helpful for myself and for anybody who’s a veteran in there. I think they would love to see it.
“SMT is just a great tool that we have in NASCAR that I guess I’m thankful for as a rookie, but I guess at times in NASCAR I wish we didn’t have it.”
The point made by Larson here is that it contributes to making drivers too even in NASCAR, that slower teams can see where they are being beat and try to work towards replicating the faster cars.
He has said this before, but one point of comfort to Larson is that he says the Indy car has a lot of technique similarities to the current generation Cup Series car, in terms of how it makes downforce too.
“It’s not exactly like it, but just the feel that I get in my hands with the front tires, not that I’m feeling the rear tires here, but like at Phoenix, just feeling the rear tires and kind of the lateral grip or lack thereof felt more similar to a Cup car,” Larson said.
“The old-style car you could slide it around more. It was a bit lazier feeling, where now the NextGen cars are closer to like a sharper edge of having grip and then losing it. I got that feeling a lot in the Indy car, the way the front tires kind of load … and then you can steer past the slip of the tire and all that.
“I don’t know, just something maybe I’m feeling in the sidewall or whatever. But it feels very similar to like what I would feel in my hands if I got tight in the middle of a corner.”
All told, Larson is grateful for another day of testing and hopes to get one in on Thursday if weather permits too.
“It was a good day,” Larson said. “We didn’t get a ton of laps or at least laps in a pack or anything like that but it was still good for the amount that I got … just to visually kind of see what that looked like and feel the runs and all of that. It was good.
“I thought it was a successful day for what I needed to learn and check off my list. Hopefully the weather could get better for tomorrow and check some more things off.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.